Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- OC Oerlikon AG Chief Executive
Officer Michael Buscher said the Swiss maker of gears and
textile machinery plans to make deeper savings after orders at
its gears unit dropped in the third quarter.

Oerlikon is constantly assessing its “manufacturing
footprint” and wants more supply-chain savings from the drive
systems unit, Buscher said in an interview in Zurich today. The
unit’s orders fell 16 percent in the quarter on slowing demand
across industries from mining to construction.

When asked whether Pfaeffikon-based Oerlikon will consider
selling part of the textile division, where the natural-fibres
sub-unit is contributing weaker margins, Buscher responded:
“There is no reason now to make any kind of speculations. We
are concentrating on operational improvement.”

Third-quarter earnings before interest and taxes fell 10
percent from a year earlier to 111 million Swiss francs ($119
million), as the margin of Ebit to sales dropped to 11.6 percent
from 13.1 percent, the company said in a statement today.
Oerlikon got 65 percent of the quarter’s total revenue from the
textiles unit, where the Ebit margin was 10.9 percent.

The company confirmed an overall Ebit margin target of
about 12.5 percent for the year.

The manufacturer may make changes to the textile division
and make acquisitions for the coating and vacuum divisions,
Patrick Laager, an analyst at Credit Suisse, wrote in a note to
investors today.

Oerlikon is selling a solar division to Tokyo Electron Ltd.
for 250 million francs. Buscher has also sold two Italian
manufacturing plants for drive systems this year and in August
appointed a new head for the vacuum unit to restore flagging
margins at the business.

Buscher said in June he would make “clear decisions” if
units failed to meet targets for the return on net assets.